poloniex and bittrex are both silent for a long time

Are these the only sites you think serve altcoins? There are a lot of exchanges that have altcoins and some are even doing IEO, I'm not quite sure today.
The suggestion of Samayuki where Bitcoin season is the time is what I would agree with. It's all over the news that "halving" is nearing and this may be true or not but everything is just speculation.